


Beyond the Fade

by ushauz



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Halward Pavus' A+ Parenting, Multi, Spirits, internalized issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-08
Updated: 2020-02-08
Packaged: 2021-02-27 19:29:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22621036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ushauz/pseuds/ushauz
Summary: Cole wasn't the only spirit lurking around Skyhold, but some of the others may have not yet, in fact, realized that they were spirits.
Relationships: Dagna/Sera (Dragon Age), Fen'Harel | Solas/Female Lavellan, Iron Bull/Dorian Pavus, Leliana/Josephine Montilyet
Comments: 38
Kudos: 153





	Beyond the Fade

Ghirill Lavellan was not a mage. She was a warrior and liked it, though she wished she could be a warrior and a mage both. There was a satisfaction in dismembering a man who was trying to dismember you, and Corypheus was giving her a never-ending stream of people to take apart piece by piece.

But she was raised Dalish, and all Dalish were taught the basics of magic, in hopes that they too would become mages, that their birthright would awaken in them. Ghirill had really, really wanted to be a mage, and had studied magic for years before the Keeper had to have a talk with her. She was told though that at the very least, there were some forms of magic that anyone could access like dwarven runes and certain magical enchantments. A magic sword was a magic sword for whoever used it.

Not that young Ghirill got a magical sword to hit people with. The clan didn’t have money for that, though she certainly had a magical sword now.

Not having magic was one of the many things that fueled some of her angrier emotions. Venatori mages were particularly satisfying to kill, because they had magic and _that_ was what they chose to do with their lives? So she hit them with her magical sword and felt like she was doing magic better than they were, as she was still alive to do her vague form of magic, and they were dead and thus couldn’t do much of anything at all.

Mostly it was just her sword, so she forgot that rarely, there were other forms of magic anyone could use. The point was, she had noticed a strange indentation on the war room table for the first time, which she pressed into with a weird click and a feeling of static across her fingers. A noise buzzed through the room and then a large circle flared into view, coincidentally surrounding the entire circle of people. And yes, everyone was there today.

They had been talking about the upcoming Halamshiral. They were not talking about it now. Sera had yelped at the sudden magic, and Solas had strangely stiffened. Cole began to make a high-pitched upset noise, which was about when Ghirill realized what the enchantment was. The appearance was slightly different from the ones they’d had back at her clan, but the effect was unmistakable.

“Oh hey an elgar’arla,” Ghirill said. “Weird. What’s one of those doing in a castle?”

“What did you do?” Josephine asked, looking startled.

And the thing was, had no one interrupted, Ghirill would have shrugged and pressed the button again and dispersed the ring. She didn’t want to hurt Cole.

But.

“I have no idea what you did,” Solas said. “But you need to undo it. The magic is upsetting Cole, and staying in longer won’t be good for him.”

Ghirill was not the smartest person in her clan. She might have been the strongest person in the clan, but not the smartest. All the same, something clicked in her brain rapidly, one after another. She made no move, just stared at Solas.

“Do you mind?” Solas asked.

“Why don’t you do it?” Ghirill asked casually. “You are the ‘elf expert’ after all. I’m sure you could disperse a silly Dalish trap with your magic.”

“Inquisitor do you mind not taking your relationship problems into the middle of this?” Josephine asked, somehow both scolding and diplomatic at the same time.

Ghirill’s eyes narrowed. “Yeah sure, just as soon as everyone exits the circle except Cole.”

“What?” Josephine asked.

“You can’t fault me,” Ghirill said calmly. “Consider it the curiosity of a dozen Dalish tales for children. Please, everyone, step outside of the elgar’arla.”

Cassandra sighed, heavily, but stepped right outside the circle. Cullen quickly followed, looking unusually jittery, and then so did Vivienne and Iron Bull.

The high pitched upset noise only increased as Blackwall and Varric passed through the circle. Leliana, looking bored, walked to the edge of it before stopping with a confused expression on her face. The rest made no move at all.

“Seriously?” Ghirill asked, gesturing to everyone still inside: Josephine, Leliana, Sera, Cole, Dorian, and Solas.

Josephine folded her arms, looking the most disgruntled Ghirill had ever seen her.

“Well thank you outing everyone,” Solas said coldly. “I’m sure that was completely necessary.”

“It really was,” Ghirill said, “because if my own people can’t be honest with me about the potential of getting stuck in a basic spirit trap, then we have a severe problem in the field.”

“Some of them,” Solas said pointedly, “didn’t know. We were hoping to help some of them understand over time because suddenly realizing one’s true nature can be traumatic, and-” Solas paused before looking over at Dorian. “What are you doing in here?”

Dorian sighed. “I’ve been getting stuck in some form of binding circles or other since I was young enough to walk into them. It doesn’t mean anything. It’s just a fluke.”

A mixture of emotions flashed across Solas’s face before he shrugged, and Josephine with him.

“I guess- I guess flukes can happen?” Ghirill asked. Something didn’t seem right with the statement, but she couldn’t figure out what.

“Well that fluke’s crossed over to me,” Sera said. “This is great. I hate it. Let me _out.”_

Sera looked even more frantic, muscles tensed like she wanted to bolt but still remaining still, wild around the eyes in a way Ghirill hadn’t ever quite seen on Sera, which was saying something because ‘wild’ and ‘chaotic whirlwind’ were Sera’s natural default states.

Not that that couldn’t be such a thing for a person, but it made a whole lot of sense, all of sudden, as Ghirill stared and Sera didn’t leave.

“You can’t honestly be thinking of letting them out,” Cullen said. “Inquisitor, if they are _demons-”_

“A demon is just a spirit that wants something from you,” Ghirill said. “There isn’t a fucking difference otherwise, ugh. Honestly, what do they teach you?”

“We’ll talk later about this,” Josephine said.

“We better,” Leliana said in a dangerous tone. “You weren’t surprised, Josie. You were keeping this from me.”

Ghirill sighed but pressed the secret button again. The circle disappeared, and Sera bolted from the room.

—

Sera was _people._ The test was a fluke, right? All a fluke, dumb magic, all of it, was fake and she was real because that’s how it worked. And Dorian and Josie were real, and Leliana was probably real, and they were all people.

They weren’t just nothing with a face, fake, hollow, nothing there, just strings tugging them along, do this, do that, dance them like frigging puppets. No place for puppets with Andraste. They didn’t take in demons because they _weren’t people._

She giggled hysterically. All fake, that’s what it was. Some stupid magic shite that didn’t even work. Still people.

She rocked while tapping the wood next to her over and over and over, letting the rhythm and familiarity soothe something inside of her.

She was okay. It was all bunk, and she knew it was bunk, and she was Sera.

But something had rattled loose, and no amount of rocking in the world could fix it.

—

Solas found her later, the absolute dickweasel.

“I thought we might try talking again,” he said calmly, like she was some kind of hissing animal.

“Piss off, don’t wanna talk to you,” Sera said. She spun on her heels and started walking away, but he followed suit with his face doing that ‘patient’ thing, and it infuriated her, because of course had to be patient with her, like he was so much _greater_ than her.

“I know finding out like this can be traumatic, but surely you can see now what I meant. Looking past the sky, your ‘deja vu’ episodes, and despite your constant mockery of it, you are aware of where the Veil is acting up.”

“Said piss off,” she said again, warningly.

“We are not so far apart. We are similar,” Solas said. “And-”

“And I’m only worth shite if I’m your kind of people? Been there, heard that.” Sera’s eyes narrowed.

And still! Still he followed her, but he was seeming frustrated.

“It’s too late, Sera,” he said. “You can’t run from this any longer. The revelation has begun, and you can either accept it or suffer needlessly, though I am fairly certain which path you will pick for yourself.”

“I’ve warned you,” she said, spinning around now. He was trapping her, and she did not deal well with being trapped, and she had told him to leave, and he wasn’t. Respecting. Her space. Was just following her around to throw words at her and rub his superiority and wisdoms into her face.

She would not deal with it.

“You can’t tell me you aren’t the least bit curious what kind of-”

And then she socked him right in the nose.

—

“Maybe you shouldn’t have followed her around like that,” Ghirill admonished.

Sera had broken Solas’ nose. Solas had managed to heal it, but not before requiring someone to snap it back into place. Coincidentally blood had gotten all over Solas’ face and even down into his shirt. He wasn’t angry at her though. Embarrassed, perhaps, but he should have known she would have lashed out, and it was on him for ignoring, in hindsight, the rather obvious signs she had been about to lash out.

“I’m _trying_ to spare her future suffering,” Solas said, his voice still nasally from the blood in his nose. “Because someone revealed the true natures of a number of us.”

“Yeah. And a certain someone who didn’t tell his actual girlfriend that he’s a spirit. A spirit of Pride, even,” Ghirill said, folding her arms. Solas looked up at her. “You just picked ‘pride’ in elvhen. It’s not subtle, and I’m pretty sure that’s the sort of thing you tell people before you get to second base in the Fade.”

“…not many take the revelation well,” Solas said. “I had been debating when to tell you.”

“It’s- I don’t know,” she said, tossing the bloody rag aside. “Like before you were some elf with an overwhelming obsession with the Fade. Just decided to make a bunch of Fade friends. Means less when you yourself come from there.”

“Why would it mean less?” Solas asked.

“It meant that there was a mortal who did decide spirits were his friends and fuck anyone who said otherwise,” Ghirill said. “Story’s different now. Fade friends isn’t as meaningful when you are from the Fade, and I guess I liked the idea of someone wanting to make friends so much they reached across a metaphysical divide. Though now I know what you were lying about.”

“Oh?” Solas asked. “You’d caught something.”

“Yeah the town you said you were from was destroyed centuries ago,” she said.

“Oh,” Solas said again. Fuck. “I could have sworn- ah well.”

He glanced at her, feeling a brim of different emotions. Disappointment. He’d thought the Anchor might have changed something, but no. She walked out of binding trap all the same.

Elves were so different now. A side effect, he supposed, of having the Fade ripped and sealed away and only accessible in dreams. After a few millennia, of course they would have become mortal.

He was distantly reminded of Mythal talking about how elves weren’t what they used to be, how back in her day, fashioning a physical body for oneself was still new, and the concept of physical children was a terrifying one. What if what was given birth to was only an animal? How could you make sure there would be a spirit in that meat? Thoughts that were given the side-eye as by then there had been dozens of generations of children born in the unchanging world at that point, and they had all managed just fine. Perhaps… Just maybe a comparison could be made here.

But no he was fairly certain he was still in the right.

“How have the others taken it?” Solas asked. “A number of them have been avoiding me.”

“Well Cullen’s quit,” Ghirill said, plopping down next to him on the couch. “I think he could have handled if it’d just been a couple, but Josie and Leliana too? His fellow co-advisers? That was too much for him I think. Vivienne I think is secretly freaking out because there were demons she didn’t realize were demons, and Iron Bull and Cassandra have joined her in that. Blackwall- I’m not sure about him. I think he’s mostly worried about Sera. Don’t know if I believe that Dorian getting caught in the trap was a ‘fluke’, but I can’t think of any other reason that might have happened.”

Dorian’s situation was strange, but mostly Solas wanted to ignore it.

He blinked. Why did he want to ignore it? Something wasn’t quite right.

“And… yourself?” he asked.

“I _can_ understand the logic of not telling me,” she said at last. “Spirits _aren’t_ trusted in most areas. But I didn’t tattoo Elgar’nan over my entire face for nothing, and you didn’t tell me. You let me just find out rather than be honest with me, and that really fucking stings, Solas, because if we can’t have basic honesty in our-” She sighed. “Give me a couple of weeks to calm down about this. And to find a new Commander.”

—

The next staff meeting was between only the advisers, not the entire group. Which was good, because Ghirill doubted Sera would show up right now. Or Vivienne. Or Iron Bull. At the very least, Cullen was the only one who had quit. Everyone else was still signed on, even if it was through teeth-clenched agreements.

Cassandra was holding herself very stiffly and kept glancing at Leliana. The Left Hand to the Right Hand. Who Cassandra had theoretically known for years now and never knew she was a spirit, that entire time.

Leliana looked like she was holding together fairly well, all things considered. Better than Sera was, at any rate. Still though, Ghirill wasn’t always the best at telling complex emotions.

“How you holding up?”

“Terrible,” Leliana said in that same Leliana tone she always used.

See, this is why Ghirill asked.

“I-” Josephine began.

“Not now, Josie,” Leliana said, a bit sharper than that same Leliana tone she always used.

So they still weren’t talking. Ghirill wanted to groan. She _needed_ everyone to work together. They couldn’t afford the luxury of infighting when Corypheus was still a powerful threat.

“Well, I found us a new Commander,” Ghirill said. “Fiona has agreed to take over leadership duties as she already has experience with troops as a Gray Warden and as a clandestine leader of a major rebellion.”

“That should be a smooth transition,” Leliana said. “And salvage some of the damage this has done.”

Josephine looked honestly upset, and Ghirill didn’t like seeing Josephine look upset. Granted, Josephine knew how to weaponize her emotions for maximum effectiveness so people would bend to her desires, because she was a diplomat. Leliana seemed unmoved. Ghirill couldn’t fully blame her, she supposed. If Samassan had known Ghirill was secretly a Vengeance spirit or the like and hadn’t told her on purpose, she’d be pissed too.

Probably more pissed in that case, because she would have been a Vengeance spirit. That would have ended badly.

“I know you are both upset for your reasons, but I say this frankly: get over them,” Ghirill said with her usual blunt lack of tact. “Or shove them into a corner. Normally I wouldn’t bother telling you, as you are adults who can do whatever they damn well please, but with Cullen gone we need the remaining leaders to be strong and to trust each other. So talk it out. Or fuck it out. However you deal with your emotions. Just get it over with already.”

—

Now it wasn’t just his Elfiness that Sera had to dodge. It was Cole too.

Cole was the last person she wanted to see, because she could see him. And then her mind did things, and he’d say something, and she could just see those strings tugging. Like a puppet on a play. This was your part, so make it a good one. Think outside the box and then you can see outside the box, see just nothing upon nothing threatening to spill out and-

Nope, not going down that dark path, not again.

“It’s too late now,” Cole said from beside her.

She jolted and hissed, but couldn’t manage to get all the way away. Because she didn’t think people would look for her on the roof. People don’t go up on roofs.

A dark little voice mentioned that if people don’t go on roofs, and she and Cole are on the roof-

“Nope. Go away.”

Why wouldn’t people just stay away and let her be? She was _fine._

“You aren’t fine,” Cole said. “It’s okay though, I wasn’t fine either when I found out I wasn’t real.”

For a second, she could feel those strings.

Cole’s eyes went wide. “That really didn’t help. Uh. Fo-”

“Just quit it already,” she said, shoving him hard and nearly off the roof itself, feeling something dangerous bubbling deep inside. That same feeling whenever she saw rich tits lording over the poor, when she was informed yet again she wasn’t elfy enough, proper enough, human enough, ever anything enough. The anger caught and festered and she-

It was all his fault, part of her reasoned. All those strings got tangled up in hers.

Cole looked hurt at her, with those fake eyes, as if there was anything going on in there at all, and it hurt. Her throat hurt. Not sob hurt, but she hissed, and breathed out smoke that had burned her throat raw.

“I can make you forget any of this,” Cole said again, a bit desperately even. “The entire thing. Just Sera. Because otherwise this is going to hurt you.”

She didn’t want to remember, but more than that-

“I don’t need your friggin demon help!” she yelled.

Why wouldn’t people just leave her alone?

She rolled from the roof and dropped onto a balcony, and from there it was a quick drop down to the ground. People scattered, and she pretended it was because she was angry and not because she was leaving a trail of smoke behind her. Because she was fine, fine, fine. Everyone was wrong, and she was a person and as real as anyone.

—

“Dorian, if I might have a word,” Solas said.

Dorian sighed dramatically, closing his book and crossing his legs. “Is this about the events earlier this week?”

Dorian was still processing the revelation of ‘more people you knew were spirits’. He was starting to get the sinking feeling his father might have been wrong about ‘all spirits are amorphous constructs of the Fade and have no free will’ because if there was anyone who that couldn’t apply to, it was Sera. Sera was the most free-willed person Dorian had ever met. If she didn’t have free will, then no one did as far as Dorian was concerned. But this wasn’t the largest journey for Dorian to have. His beliefs had already been under question from talking to Cole.

Or so he had thought. The entire thing was still unsettling regardless.

He presumed that was what Solas wanted to talk about in Dorian’s little corner of the library. Maybe something about how Solas was a spirit all along, and that’s why he dressed like that, because he still hadn’t figured out the finer details of clothing.

“Have you really been getting stuck in binding circles for your entire life?” Solas asked slowly.

“It doesn’t mean anything,” Dorian said on reflex. Rarely, someone would find out, but nobody bothered to investigate further. ‘Just a fluke’ they would all inevitably say. ‘Huh, weird’. And then they would move on with their day like reasonable adults. “You are a talented mage. You know that magic is complex, and sometimes highly specific categories ping false positives.”

“Yes, I am aware,” Solas said. “I know you aren’t a spirit. And I’m not curious to look any further.”

“Fantastic. Why are we talking?” Dorian asked.

“Because I’m not curious to look any further,” Solas repeated. “That, something is wrong with. Why would I not want to look any further into something related to the Fade? It doesn’t make sense.”

Dorian frowned and slowly put aside his book. “That is peculiar now that you mention it.”

“I think there might be some magic that has been placed upon your person,” Solas said. “To hide something. Of what, I can’t be certain. Knowing Tevinter, perhaps to cover some unknown weakness of some sort? With your permission I would like to magically examine you and see if I can find if there is some spellwork, and if so, to disable it.”

Dorian was not fond of magically invasive procedures even before his father started killing off some of the household staff in a plan to alter Dorian’s mind. But he was also curious, after a fashion, as the curiosity never lasted long on why certain magic affected him. It was simply a fact of life.

But agreeing would mean something to Solas, and Dorian wanted to get along with Solas and to not constantly be stumbling about with his foot in his mouth like a well-trained circus performer. Getting along with Solas meant getting to talk _magic_ with Solas, and despite his apostate background—no, wait, spirit background, Solas had confessed as much and frankly that made a lot of his Fade knowledge make more sense—Solas was a wellspring of magical secrets. And Dorian wanted those secrets. Talking magic with Solas always lead to fascinating things, and it was something Solas actually respected Dorian on as well.

“Very well,” Dorian said in the spirit of diplomacy. “Have at it.”

Solas dragged him down to the basement, which totally didn’t send every wrong message to go dangerously alarming up in his head. He was pretty sure Solas didn’t have a reason to murder people and do something to Dorian with blood magic, but hey! He didn’t think Alexius or his father would do that either.

But no, Solas just had him sit on the floor because nobody had been assed to bring chairs down yet, and then Solas went into a meditative trance, green light seeping from behind his eyes, one hand on Dorian’s chest.

Solas’ eyes would flicker back and forth, seeing something Dorian certainly wasn’t. He wanted to ask. He also wanted to leave as he felt horribly exposed. Honestly, sitting around letting strange spirits do magic on you in return for hopes of magical secrets was precisely the sort of behavior he was taught to avoid. Dorian didn’t have long to reflect on this, however, before Solas looked right at him.

“I think I found it,” he said. “There’s a compulsion hooked into you, old and powerful. I am no blood mage, but I think I can sever it regardless. I have practice with such things.”

Seemed an odd skill for one to have, but Solas was nothing but filled with a strange assortment of skills.

“Alright,” Dorian said slowly. And then there was a strange tugging sensation, and the light faded.

A few seconds passed.

“Oh,” Dorian said, as the compulsion faded and suddenly a whole chunk of his life made a lot more sense.

“Oh shit,” Solas said.

“So. That would have broken the magic on not just us, but on anyone that this compulsion has affected. So… everyone suddenly now knows.”

That would include the Iron Bull.

“Are you-”

“Fine great this is fine,” Dorian said standing up, because there was only one reason! People got caught in binding circles! And apparently without the compulsion, it was self-evident.

“Do you want to talk?” Solas asked. 

And of course Solas was concerned. Dorian was his people, after all. An amorphous construct of the Fade without any real free will.

“Nope. I am going to be alone now. Goodbye,” Dorian said, trying to not directly flee from the room per se but failing at that as he definitely fled from the room.

—

Things were going fuzzy around the edges of Sera’s vision, and she couldn’t quite remember how she got from here to there. She tried doing alchemy to calm down, but the flasks would just boil over, hissing through shite, and that made it worse. She liked alchemy, normally. It made sense, and it made her take deep breaths and be patient and be calm, temporarily, as her focus snapped to it and just it and nothing else in the world.

And now she was fucking it up like she was fucking up her life in general. She felt like snapping, like… like she was as crazy as everyone kept saying.

So no, she didn’t want to see Dagna.

“Can we talk? Please?” Dagna asked, in the doorway, looking up at Sera.

“If you wanna talk about ‘recent events’,” Sera said, putting air quotes around the words, “then we have nothing to say. Nothing happened, get it?”

But if Dagna wanted something else, then Sera could use a distraction. Dagna was funny and frigging adorable.

“Denial isn’t going to get you anywhere,” Dagna said, and she probably meant it well, but Sera heard Dagna say it, and heard Solas say it, and heard the humans who talked down at her for not knowing her place say it, and it grated.

She knew, logically, that recent events could also deal with the things melting around Sera, but emotions always blinded Sera in a way that normal people never seemed to have a problem with.

“Look I suspected that there was something with you-” Dagna continued, and Sera’s anger snapped.

“So was that it?” she asked. “You’re all about the Fade. Won’t blighted well shut up about the _Fade._ Was I just a- a pet project or something?”

She was unfair. She knew her words were unfair. She couldn’t stop them coming from her mouth.

“No,” Dagna said. “Look, if you would just listen-”

Sera shut the door in her face. She wanted to cry. She wanted to scream and smash things because her skin was too tight and all the sounds had gone sharp/loud, and her clothes burned against her like acid.

And she could still hear the phantom voices of people calling her crazy, calling her _inferior._

So she screamed and cried into a pillow instead. Because that made sense.

—

Cut off from the Qun, abandoned by that which he once held dear, lost in a strange land, there was a lot that Iron Bull no longer knew.

But one of the things he had been relatively sure of was that you do not put your dick into a demon. On the list of the top ten places a dick was never meant to go, ‘demons’ was in the top five.

Except his dick had, at this point, already gone into a demon. His dick had boldly ventured where no dick should ever go. But it wasn’t like Iron Bull could change time. Dorian would still remain having been fucked by Iron Bull. So. In that case, it wouldn’t be too weird to continue to fuck the demon, right?

The problem was Dorian was a really sweet guy, sweeter than Dorian would ever admit. And they kinda had a good thing going right now, and Iron Bull didn’t want that gone. Except Iron Bull had suddenly realized that Dorian was a demon. They both had, apparently, and Dorian’s reaction was horrified enough to be genuine. No deception there, just pain.

If Iron Bull would have broken out into possession or magic or other demons, it would have happened already. And frankly, he was already well on his way to putting everything into the repression box. He didn’t like demons, but handled Cole okay. Leliana, Josephine, Sera, and Dorian were all now also demons, and that was a lot to take in. (He’d never been sure about Solas, personally, so that hadn’t been a surprise).

Cole, well, Cole was a weird squirrely kid, but the others had already been people. It was a lot harder to depersonize them now, and frankly, Iron Bull didn’t want to. Dangerous, his mind whispered at him. Frightening that someone could just be a demon and not know it, but he’d walked out of the weird spirit trap and been fine, so not him.

The point was, he had once been relatively sure that fucking demons was a great way to lose one’s dick, but now he wasn’t as sure.

Mostly what he knew was that people hadn’t seen Dorian since the spell around him had dropped, but the wine from the Inquisition’s wine cellar was still slowly going missing. Iron Bull hoped that was because Dorian was doing what Dorian normally did, drinking, instead of just poofing back to the Fade. He wasn’t exactly sure how demons worked, even after all this time with Cole. Normally he wasn’t as thrilled with Dorian’s reliance upon alcohol to solve all his problems, but baby steps.

Iron Bull was making his way to Dorian’s room off from the library when he was stopped by Solas blocking his path and giving him a hard look. Solas had always been downright Tamassran to spirits before, and it didn’t seem like he was in any signs of stopping soon.

“Solas,” Iron Bull greeted.

“If you are thinking of visiting Dorian, I recommend you wait at least a week,” Solas said coolly.

“I appreciate your concern, but I kinda wanna see him.”

“He is in a very delicate state right now, and I refuse-”

“I was going to open with ‘So I’m not breaking up with you.’”

Solas paused. “Oh.” And then he looked judgmental.

“Seriously. What is your problem? You’re a spirit. You fuck other spirits.”

Solas frowned. “Honestly I don’t know. It’s possibly a force of habit at this point.”

—

‘Fucking it out’ wasn’t really what Josephine did. At all. Ever. For any reason, poor emotions or pleasant ones as sex was simply not something she was interested in. Her words, as always, would have to suffice.

Leliana was not in her tower nor the war room. Josephine managed to find her in the gardens, surrounded by flowers. It was early morning, early enough to still be mostly dark, and there was no one else around.

“You’ve been avoiding me,” Josephine said.

“I have, and perhaps unfairly,” Leliana said sadly. “Sit next to me?”

Josephine slid in as requested.

“I can remember my childhood, my mother, faintly,” Leliana said. “Her favorite flower. Lessons from Cecilie. But then, Cole can remember details of the previous Cole’s life, can he not?”

“Yes,” Josephine said. “Though I will confess something that I didn’t say earlier. Solas and I- you are a kind of spirit we haven’t seen before.”

“Now that _is_ something,” Leliana said.

“It’s almost like you aren’t from the Fade at all, but were always from here,” Josephine said. “It is fascinating. Perhaps you were always a spirit.”

Leliana remained silent.

“Or is there a moment you suspect you might have died?” Josephine asked gently.

She laughed, harshly. “Many times.”

“In any particularly strange—or holy—place then?”

Leliana opened her mouth and then paused for a moment. Josephine patiently waited.

“Once in the Blight,” Leliana said finally said. “The Temple of Sacred Ashes. We found the urn, and the Warden wanted to defile them. I fought her and lost. I presumed I just reached the ashes, but Oghren... He’d said the entire temple was filled with lyrium. Hypothesized that that was what was really making the temple act so, and there was a spirit there that Morrigan had greeted as such. I ignored all that at the time, because it was Her ashes. I thought She brought me back, but.”

“But maybe you died and never noticed.”

A faint breath hissed out of Leliana, and her eyes tightened in pain.

Josephine wasn’t sure what to say to that kind of betrayal. She knew Leliana had thought highly of the Warden until something had happened, but Leliana had never told her what. Just that there had been ‘a fight where the Warden had shown her true colors’.

She wanted to reach out, tenderly brush aside a lock of hair, but Leliana didn’t like to be touched when distressed. Instead she just slid her hand a bit closer to Leliana’s on the bench, wordlessly. Leliana could grab it if she wanted.

“You knew this about me,” Leliana then said bitterly. “That I wasn’t who I thought I was.”

“And you know from Cole that finding out you are a spirit all of a sudden can be traumatic. We tried to ease the process, Solas and I. Drop hints in hopes that you and the others would slowly come to that realization on your own. Please believe me, Leliana, I did not want to keep this from you. It hurt not telling you, but it could have hurt you a lot more in just telling.”

“Do you know what kind of spirit I am then?” she asked.

“Do you?”

“I-” Leliana winced again. “I don’t. I feel lost. I have since this entire thing started.”

“Between what?” she asked gently.

“Faith I think,” Leliana said. “I want to believe. But I also must do what needs be done. Surely a spirit must be devoted to one thing. That’s what I’ve gathered.”

“A Fade spirit, yes,” Josephine said. “I have no idea how it works for whatever kind of spirit you are. I didn’t even know there were spirits that didn’t come from the Fade. Your kind must be exceedingly rare, so who knows what the rules are? Though a Fade spirit can find themselves at a crossroads, normally when they are forced between their inner nature and some outward presence trying to force them into being something different, whether that force be a person, a belief system, or the world itself. A spirit can change their nature. Such a process is a tumultuous and dangerous one, sometimes even ending in the death of the spirit when caught between such extremes, though such change is far more common in the mortal world, I’ve noticed. Normally the concept the spirit changes into is similar enough to the previous one that it’s not too far of a journey, and thus not as dangerous.”

She did not say ‘Faith and Necessity are two very different concepts for you, and I am so, so worried’. Leliana’s struggles were hard enough, though Josephine lived in fear that one day the inner turmoil would be too much for Leliana, and she would fade away completely with no anchor to keep her steady. She would have to talk to Ghirill. Ghirill had a strange influence over others, and while Josephine would prefer Faith, Josephine would happily settle with Necessity if it kept Leliana alive.

“What of you?” Leliana asked. “How did you enter the world?”

“Oh I just stepped on through,” Josephine said. “The Montilyets summoned me across. Boon for a boon. They wanted help with their family fortune, you see. They were quite nice about it.”

“Boon for a boon. What did you ask for?”

“Being summoned,” Josephine said blinking. “That was it. Your world is filled with such nice things. Spirits from the Fade, you see, most of them don’t understand. It’s not pure, so they reject it. But even with all these imperfections, even with some of the most horrid people, there is so much beauty and so much good that exists in your world. And it stays good. Actions matter here so much more in the Fade. I can help people, I can influence life itself, and it all remains. If, or when, I die, I hope I will have left a positive mark here, that I will have made things better for people. And that will remain.”

“So you are a demon,” Leliana said, catching the tone between the words, but there was no condemnation in her voice. “I met a Desire demon once in the Blight. She just wanted to see the world and didn’t seem to mean any harm to others. It gave me much to think about.”

“Well, I’m a demon after a fashion,” Josephine said. “I- embrace the imperfect. I do not require it. And I exploit it in others.”

Leliana stared at her.

Josephine looked at her guilelessly.

“You’re a Pride demon,” Leliana said.

“Yes,” Josephine said.

“Huh,” Leliana said.

“Honestly, my kind ends up doing more work to keep this world safe than most traditional spirits,” she said. “We can’t play around in your sandbox if it gets destroyed. We want to live here.”

“And you’ve remained with the Montilyets. They’ve been fine with this?”

“They did some forgeries, and then I was Josephine Montilyet and acted like I was part of the family. It didn’t take very long for it to not be an act.” Josephine smiled warmly. “Yvette _is_ my younger sister, do you understand?”

“Yes,” Leliana said. “I can understand that.”

“It’s honestly not been that hard,” Josephine continued. “Nobles think themselves clever, but it’s not very hard for them to outsmart themselves. And I’ve made good on the deal. The Montilyets’ fortune has been returned, as they requested, and they can pursue their arts as they wanted, and Yvette can try at all her things and then decide after a few months that she’s tired of it and try something else. I want to do good by them.”

Leliana smiled. “I never doubted that,” she said, finally sliding her hand over Josephine’s.

Josephine blushed. “So. Not as mad at me anymore?” she asked hopefully.

“I can never stay mad at you; you know that,” she said.

And then Josephine leaned forward and kissed her.

—

Sera timed things. Dagna was always at the undercroft around this time, doing her latest experiments on the Fade or lyrium or whatever.

Dagna was nice, was weird but a good sport. Made Sera a pen that whenever someone signed their name it instead wrote ‘Butts’ in beautiful cursive. Said it was a fun challenge, and she wasn’t all up in it, all snooty and superior with knowledge like Solas.

And, well, Sera felt bad. She’d snapped, and she shouldn’t have done that because Dagna had been trying to be nice. Failing, but trying, and Sera should have been a better, more patient person. It chimed in with the chorus of people telling her off all her life, but this time it was on her, and Dagna was fun, and Sera didn’t want to lose that.

Sera knocked on the side of the wall. Dagna looked up, and her enthusiastic face went to a more neutral one.

“Hey,” Sera said awkwardly, shuffling forward. “Uh. Sorry about earlier.”

“Do you want to sit?” Dagna offered. “I’ve got a normal chair that I haven’t enchanted yet with eldritch properties.”

Sera couldn’t tell if that was meant to be a friendly fun haha joke or a barb at earlier comments. She shuffled over and sat anyway, and Dagna pulled up another chair.

“Humor me,” Dagna said. “I’m a dwarf, and even though I lived almost ten years in a Circle, I still don’t get why some people are in such arms over magic and the Fade. It’s always been fascinating to me. So. Why is the prospect of you being… maybe a bit more Fade-inclined than you thought you were a bad thing?”

“Demons aren’t people,” Sera insisted.

“Well that’s wrong,” Dagna said.

Sera rolled her eyes, and Dagna held up a finger. “Are you getting this information from Andrastianism? I don’t have a problem with it; I’m just curious.”

“Yeah,” Sera said, trying not to feel the phantom stares of everyone’s disapproval.

“Well, I’ve heard some say the religion also claims elves and dwarves are less than humans. Do you believe that?”

“No, that’s bunk,” Sera said. “And that’s Chantry, not Andraste.”

“Okay, that’s good to work with,” Dagna said. “Did Andraste herself say spirits and demons are less than mortals?”

Sera frowned. “It’s not that simple.”

“I mean, it kind of is,” Dagna said. “Please don’t take this the wrong way, but your logic doesn’t add up. And that’s normal! A lot of people, _all the time,_ get into these logic hiccups. If the reason you don’t like spirits is because of Andrastianism, but you do think Andrastianism is wrong for saying elves and dwarves are less than humans, then that’s a logic hiccup.”

“But they’re not- nobody cares about them,” Sera said, and that wasn’t right. That wasn’t her point, but she didn’t know how to voice her point. “It’s not about proper, but spirits aren’t safe. They aren’t normal. They aren’t people. I don’t know how to friggin explain it other than that.”

She didn’t say it was, a bit, about proper. That it made her points more true. If she disagreed with the stupid bits but agreed with the rest, she wasn’t being difficult or anything; her disagreements meant more, that way, and she’d already decided that some concessions had to be made about magic if she wanted to feel safe as an elf around Andrastian humans. And then hated for thinking that, because she didn’t want to fight; she just wanted to laugh and get along and feel included somewhere for once, and if the elfy elves didn’t want her-

“I just don’t see enough evidence,” Dagna said. “Here me out. I have devoted my life to the study of the arcane in a particular fashion: science. A theory is only as good as long as it is supported by evidence. And when you find conflicting evidence, you don’t get upset or anything. That’s exciting! It means you were wrong, and now you have the chance to be right. So you confront your theories. You make new, better, stronger ones! Sometimes your theories just weren’t developed enough, and sometimes they were flat-out wrong. Which is okay! There’s a lot of things that are wrong, and life is figuring out which ones those are so we can make for a better future.”

Sera folded her arms defensively.

“So your theory is ‘spirits and demons aren’t people’,” Dagna said. “But that’s obviously untrue, since you are here, and you are a person. Cole’s weird, but he seems like a person. Leliana, Josephine, Solas, Dorian, they’re all people, so that’s a lot of evidence that spirits and demons are people. Which is interesting because I, too, was taught they weren’t really, when I was in the Circle. Another thing I was also wrong about and now get to be right about, and that’s neat I think.”

“But-”

“You said yourself, the parts that said elves and dwarves weren’t equal to humans was ‘bunk’,” Dagna said. “What you have discovered is that there’s something else that’s bunk. And now we know!”

She was being warm and enthusiastic on purpose, Sera knew. She was trying to be comforting.

“But I’m not even a demon,” Sera said, because when she wasn’t thinking the truth stuck in her mind like a burr. “You don’t know what I am.”

“Then what are you?”

—

Dorian was doing just fine in his self-imposed exile away from the Inquisition, thank you very much. He didn’t need anyone or anything to interrupt him or his binge drinking.

“So I’m not breaking up with you,” was the first thing out of Iron Bull’s mouth when he broke into Dorian’s room.

Dorian squinted at him suspiciously.

“Do you want to talk?” Iron Bull asked, looking the most off guard Dorian had ever seen him. Probably, here was the thing, probably because Dorian was a demon.

Dorian didn’t want to talk. Dorian rather wanted to stay in his exile, but all his ways to chase Bull off would be, well, using Bull’s fear of demons, and that just seemed downright rude, even for him.

Dorian then realized Bull was, in fact, waiting for an answer. He was looking Softly and Tenderly at Dorian, like he was worried or something.

“No,” Dorian said, because he wouldn’t use Bull’s fears against him, but he was still going to be a little fucking shit.

Bull nodded, but did sit down in the room’s one oversized chair. It hadn’t actually been for Bull initially; Dorian just liked being able to curl up completely in a chair, all tucked in with a good book. There was such a chair back at the Alexius estate, and Dorian used it often for overnight research sessions.

He was never going to be able to see that estate again. Not anymore. The warding was off, and there were certain to be some instructors who suddenly realized why that Pavus kid got stuck in binding circles.

This was no good. He’d sobered enough to have _feelings,_ but he was out of alcohol without leaving the room to get some more.

Dorian didn’t want to talk, truly, but he found himself talking anyways, the traitor. “I’m not going to get to go home,” he said.

Bull was a sharp one, didn’t need a long explanation. “It’s rough,” he said, because Bull didn’t get to go home either. Which wasn’t fair, but Dorian being a biased sort never saw the Qun as being ‘fair’ despite what it proclaimed itself to be. “Do you still want to go home?”

“Yes. No. I don’t know,” Dorian said. He didn’t just want to go home, he _needed_ to. It was broken, but the good bits still shone through, and Alexius had shown him that there was a chance of fixing it. And he’d latched onto that idea so strongly it still hadn’t managed to shake loose, even now. The idea of not fixing Tevinter made him feel like he was going to positively vomit. “It’s home, despite everything. I wonder if he knows. My father, that is, that the blood magic broke on me.”

“I don’t know enough about magic. You’d know better than me,” Bull said.

His fucking father. Who had initially been supportive when Dorian struggled to find a schooling place that accepted him, tried to be kind about it. But Dorian used all his kindness up when Dorian grew into being an obstinate shit. When he was tired of having to respect ‘authority’ figures who were, by nature, not worthy of respect, had not earned a single shred of it through their actions, and sneered down on Dorian for his proclivities, over a few schoolyard crushes he hadn’t yet known not to voice.

His father who told him over and over when Dorian delved into necromancy that spirits weren’t really people, just mindless constructs playing out whatever they latched onto, and thus to be careful when interacting with the Fade.

He’d always wondered why his father and mother didn’t have another child, seeing how the bloodline was so important to at least his father. Now there was the question of if they could have children at all, if Dorian wasn’t the product of some ritual for at least one child to carry on the Pavus bloodline.

And what irony that whatever sacrifices were needed to make such a child, the result was a complete invert. Fitting, Dorian supposed, for the blood that had to have been shed.

“He taught me to hate blood magic you know,” Dorian said. “Which is quite the irony since Solas said the spell on me was some highly advanced blood magic compulsory field. Someone definitely died for that kind of magic, so. That’s proper blood magic, not just what the South thinks is blood magic. So many morals and values that he turned out to not have. How many do you suppose were complete lies just told to me to keep me in line?”

And then all of a sudden, he didn’t want Bull over there. He wanted to be held, a childish thing he supposed, but he was betwixt sobriety and stupor, so some leeway could be given. Instead of communicating this though, he drew into himself, arms around his knees.

“I can get that,” Iron Bull said. “Confronting the things the people who raised you taught you, the people you loved and cared about and who you turned your back on?”

“How’d you do it?” Dorian asked. “The Qun’s not great about magic, but you still keep around”—me— ”…Dalish. And… _Dalish_ is a mage.”

“The magic is scary, won’t lie on that,” Iron Bull said. “But maybe I like Dalish enough that I try to get past the magic freaking me out. Maybe Dalish is a good person and fun enough to be around that I want to give Dalish a shot despite the magic.”

Iron Bull tried to catch Dorian’s gaze, but Dorian looked away.

“Rethinking old views is hard, but it’s worthwhile,” Iron Bull continued. “Some of the things the Qun taught me I believe in even more strongly down South here. And some things turned out to need some rethinking. The same will go for you. I’m sure there really were good lessons your dad taught you. But there was probably some bullshit in there as well.”

“Killing people for power is still wrong,” Dorian said.

“Oh yeah, definitely,” Iron Bull agreed, perhaps a bit more fervently than was needed.

“…you really aren’t breaking up with me?” Dorian asked in a moment of weakness.

“No,” Iron Bull said. “Don’t get me wrong, this is definitely a development, one that makes me uncomfortable even.”

“I’m also uncomfortable with this,” Dorian offered helpfully.

“I imagine more than me even,” Iron Bull said, and that was saying something. “I’ll still be here as long as you want me around.”

Dorian felt his eyes burning a little. He didn’t get it. He didn’t know why Bull didn’t just leave him, especially now. He distantly wondered if that’s what Bull felt as well, waiting for the shoe to finally drop. For the other to get tired of it all.

But then Dorian had just broken out into demonhood, and Bull still wasn’t leaving. It didn’t make sense.

“That might be a while,” Dorian said, as a warning, just in case, because he was growing more attached than ever.

“I’m okay with that.”

—

Ghirill knew she had anger issues, even if she attempted to be a mature, rational adult about them, though the world gave her many things to be angry about. They’d compounded after she’d taken her first shot of dragon’s blood, but she had no regrets. Being a reaver suited her well and gave her an additional edge in battle. You could never have too many edges in battle, she felt like. It was, after all, literally a matter of life or death. She talked through a number of those emotions with Bull, who had his own method of being smacked repeatedly with a stick to deal with them.

That was the kind of ‘dealing with emotions’ that was on her level.

But, she liked Solas. He was interesting. Full of bullshit sometimes, but interesting, and always full of stories. She could listen to his stories for days on end with only a sliver of envy for mages (or, spirits, she now supposed) who got to remember that other world. So she could attempt a different method of dealing with emotions: words. And words leading to discussion and understanding.

Hopefully, at least.

“You said Cole was unique,” she said. They were in her bedroom chambers, sitting across from each other. “That he’d done the near impossible to take on human form without possessing anyone. So. What does that mean for you?”

He didn’t seem like there was another person in there, but what would she know? Her contact with the Fade was limited at best.

“My body was a gift,” Solas said. “From a dear friend. There was a time once when such a thing was possible, but the art has now been lost, and usually now some kind of sacrifice is needed for a spirit to cross over. Josephine’s case required lyrium as the Montilyets wanted to be moral about it, while I suspect in Dorian’s case death was done. No such sacrifice was needed for me, nor for Cole I imagine.”

“He could have used the first Cole’s death,” Ghirill pointed out.

Cole so badly wanted to be a spirit, but because he always offered aid to every human he came across, Ghirill had her doubts he could ever become one. That was demon work, but ‘spirit’ and ‘demon’ meant different things to him and also to Solas. They’d fought over how he condescended about the Dalish, but she could and would admit when there was a wrong, and a couple of spirits would likely know more about how spirits and demons worked than mortals. Still though, old beliefs were hard to kick. Not that at this point she saw something wrong with a helpful demon, though Cole’s idea of ‘help’ still needed work from time-to-time.

“It would have helped, but not fully,” he said.

“Well,” she said, with a small smile. “You’re the Fade expert. You would know, wouldn’t you?”

“I take it you have forgiven me?” he asked, hopefully.

“Yes,” she said. “Though I do hope this is the end of such secrets between us. You can’t truly love someone if you don’t trust them, and that’s what I heard when I found out you were a spirit. I don’t expect you to tell me all of your life’s details, but you hadn’t trusted me with something major, and that hurt.”

For a split second, he looked conflicted and sad. And then he was back to his smooth exterior. “I will remember that,” he said. If she were a proper spy, she’d know why he’d reacted so. But she’d only been assigned to the spy group as a guard, because human territories were dangerous at best. “I didn’t want to hide it from you,” he said slowly, eyes downcast. “But as I said earlier: you never know how people will react to such things. Rare is the mortal that is friendly to spirits, though I should have trusted you seeing your treatment of Cole. No more secrets.”

Ghirill really wanted to believe him, but a small part of her couldn’t help but feel he was still hiding something. Well. She didn’t want to push too much at once.

—

Dagna was accepting. Dimly, Sera appreciated it, but she wanted to talk to someone who would get it. Who wouldn’t just shower with ‘acceptance’ but also wouldn’t hurt her further. So, basically, one person.

“Greetings,” Dorian said.

“Gimme,” Sera said, gesturing at the booze he’d hoarded away in his room. Dorian decided to be alright and give her a bottle.

“People keep trying to tell you it’s all fine too?” Dorian asked after she chugged for a few seconds.

“Yeah. It’s obnoxious,” Sera said, wiping at her mouth. “What do they know?”

“I know, right?” Cole said next to them.

Both Dorian and Sera swore. Sera nearly stabbed Cole with an arrow.

“You guys are doing better than me,” Cole said lightly, despite the near stabbing. “When I found out I was f- that I wasn’t as real as I first thought, I faded away. It took days to appear again.”

“Fuck,” Dorian said succinctly.

“I hate this,” Sera said.

Cole nodded. “I hated it too. I know… I don’t always help, but I want to try. Remembering hurt for me. It doesn’t have to for you.”

Neither of them talked.

Cole tilted his head. “I found out I was a demon, and I took it hard,” he said. “’You’re just another parasite that’s wormed its way into our world, feeding off all the things you can’t have’. I didn’t just fade because I remembered; I faded because I knew it was true. I was a fake person, because that’s what they all said. Demons can’t be trusted.” Cole’s voice was considerably more upset. “So I do understand. You both want to be real. You want to be trusted. You don’t want to hurt anyone.”

“Well, we can all be fake people together,” Dorian said blithely.

“You’re still Sera,” Cole told Sera. “The same way I am Cole. I am not that Cole, but then sometimes people name their children ‘Calenhad’, and I’m told we’ve already had one of those. You might not be her, but you are still you.”

“What happened with you?” Dorian asked, looking at Sera.

It took a bit, because the words were stuck in her throat and wouldn’t come out, and she didn’t want to be vulnerable around Cole, but she did feel bad about almost pushing him off the roof of a building. “There’s a scene, okay. And it plays over and over and over and over.” Endlessly. “There was a building, an orphanage in the alienage. Human men got real mad at the elves. So they charge, kill everyone. Orphans die, building burns down. But one of the orphans was weird, and called… called a demon.” Rage. Fury. Such a violation, such a wrong, all glossed over because people were too scared to retaliate, and nobody did anything about it. “The building was so mad at what happened, at the sheer wrong of what occurred. But like, that has to work, yeah? Rage has to be everyone, all the ghosts dying over and over, that’s Rage. That’s one demon cuz demons are friggin bullshite nonsense.”

“You were Sera’s ghost,” Dorian said slowly.

“Yeah,” Sera said. “I got shunted to alienage after Emmauld died. Or. Or she did. She was there. Got killed like all the other elf kiddies. But then, something went wrong. Puppet play broke for some reason, went all wonky. And she— I—got confused. No play, so what would Sera do? Well she’d friggin run, yeah? Get out of a burning building! So. I ran, and I kept running, and then I was at the markets all confused and some people found me. Got lucky. They were Jennies, took me in all concerned. But you get it now? I’m not a spirit. I’m not even a demon. I’m just a puppet. I’m a shard of a fake. I’m nothing.”

There was silence, and then-

“You have a lot of personality for a nothing,” Dorian said.

Sera was not crying because that would be a show of weakness, and she was weak enough already.

“Sometimes that’s how some demons are made,” Dorian continued. “A fragment of one splits off and forms a new self. That’s probably what happened with you.”

“It’s the same self,” Cole corrected. “Just elsewhere.”

“I don’t get it,” Sera said, but that wasn’t quite right, because the Wardens killed the building she heard. Cleaned out all the ghosts and demons and left it empty. Except for her. The sole survivor. “So what. I’m Rage?”

Not that she was curious. But Dagna would be, and letting Dagna know would be a weird present for her that might help her make up for shutting the door in her face when she was just trying to be nice. Sera was still learning how to handle people being nice to her, and boy she sucked at it.

“No,” Cole said. “You changed over the years. Just like I’m not Despair anymore. Mania.”

Sera took a big drink at that. It hurt her throat but she really didn’t care, because at least alcohol worked on nothing people.

“What kind of fake nonsense are you?” Sera asked Dorian, wiping her mouth.

“Reformation, according to Solas,” Dorian said. “I- did not know there was such a thing, honestly.”

It made sense. Mania made sense for her. Fucked up that it made sense at all.

Asking felt bad, after. An admittance. But then this entire thing was an admittance of some sort. She was a nothing. She wasn’t a person, maybe at least. She didn’t know anymore. Dagna was brilliant and had talked a lot, and Sera didn’t know if she felt convinced because Dagna didn’t feel the nothing pressing on her eyeballs whenever she wasn’t moving, doing, being not-nothing by sheer energy.

“Okay so, I vote we form a club,” Dorian said. “The fake people club. And it’s just us. Solas? Leliana? Josephine? They are all far more well-adjusted than us, so they are excluded. Even if we, hypothetically in the future, tackle our issues, they are still excluded and we are still included, because so there.”

“I’ve never been part of a club before, so okay,” Cole agreed.

Cole still grated, was still the fake puppet demon nothing that haunted Sera’s reflection. But part of her, _distantly_ , just a little bit, felt kinda bad. “Aight,” she agreed with great reluctance.

And thus the Fake People Club was formed that day.

**Author's Note:**

> Solas: You seemed to avoid that assassin quite easily.  
> Dorian: Well I had recently raised an undead minion.  
> Solas: Why would that matter?  
> Dorian: I can see out of their eyes you know. That body saw him coming just fine.  
> Solas: ...That’s not traditionally how that works. I mean. Unless you were, you know.  
> Dorian: Ohhhhhhhhhhh.


End file.
